I think, if you are a teacher, the answer is no. Or at least it is for me. I spend most of my time at school, planning for school, creating for school (by creating I mean making up stuff to do in class because we don’t use our textbooks, so the other LA teachers and I basically make everything we do from scratch), grading stuff from school, or worrying about school. I’ve had a particularly overwhelming few weeks (evidenced by my lack of blog posts). It culminated this past Thursday when I lost it after school. I went to my friend’s room, collapsed into a desk, and basically told her I didn’t know what to do anymore—I had so much schoolwork to do, but I was so tired and because of all the work I didn’t even have time to be tired. How are people supposed to live like this I wanted to know.
As I tried to keep my meltdown from reaching critical mass, another friend came in, looked at me, and asked if I was ok. Her question was the tipping point. My answer came out in a flood of words that sounded something like this:
My sixth block is so ridiculous I don’t know what to do anymore, I have way too much grading to do and not enough time to do it all, I’m turning 26 in two weeks and I don’t even have a boyfriend, and my birthday is the same day my dad died and that sucks all the time.
And I started to cry.
Then on the way home while I talked to my little sister, I realized that the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament had started that day and I had not filled out a bracket. Not only had I not filled out a bracket, but I hadn’t watched an entire college basketball game all season. For people who don’t know me that well, this might not seem like a big deal. But, trust me, it is. It goes back to when I was a little girl. I would watch college basketball with my dad. During the tournament, I would work on brackets with my dad. And when he died, I kept doing it because it is a little piece of him that I get to keep alive, like it’s something I still get to share with him. Through high school and college, my little sister and I watched tons of college basketball and spent hours on our brackets every year (which was always worth it when our brackets turned out better than all our guy friends’) And, until he died last October, my grandpa always sent me a copy of his bracket in the mail, so now it’s about my grandpa too. In summary, I love college basketball and the tournament is huge for me.
So when I realized that this year I hadn’t even really thought about it and that I had been so wrapped up in school that I didn’t even get around to filling out a bracket, it felt like I had somehow stopped being myself, and I couldn’t help but wonder how I had gotten a job that left me no time to be myself. This, on top of the fact that I’ve been having some serious Max days (the days where I’m lonely and want to be where someone loves me best of all) lately, was enough to push me over the edge and sent me into a sobbing-induced nap on Thursday afternoon.
Once I had some post-nap clarity, I was able to start processing what my problem is. I just can’t seem to figure out how to do everything in my life. How am I supposed to be a good, well-prepared, loving teacher and still have a life of my own? How can I teach while maintaining my relationships—with my family, my friends, my high school girls who I want to spend a lot of time with because they are getting ready to graduate and go off to college? And how am I supposed to do both those things and still do normal life stuff like laundry and going to the grocery store???
Examples: Last week, I had my high school girls over for dinner because it was the first time in a long time when all three of them had the same night free. One of my best friends was in Haiti last week, so I wanted to hang out with him this week because I missed talking to him while he was gone and because I wanted to hear all about his trip. I love these people. I want to spend time with these people. I enjoyed spending time with these people. But the whole time, there was a little voice in my head reminding me of all the grading I needed to do that I could have been doing instead. I’m not a big fan of this. It’s like I always have to choose: life or school. I always use this as a reason for being glad to be single—I don’t have time for a new relationship when I clearly don’t have time for the ones I already have, right?? The problem is that I’m tired of feeling like I always have to make a choice.
So what’s a girl to do? I’m obviously not marrying a super-rich guy anytime soon, so quitting my job isn’t really an option. I really like my friends, so getting rid of them all isn’t really an option either. I feel confident that God has called me to teach, and I know He calls us to have relationships, but surely I’m not supposed to feel this overwhelmed all the time.
One thing that’s been happening to me a lot lately is that I’ve started to see Bible verses I’ve read a ton before in a new light; it’s been rater exciting really. In the middle of my overwhelmed-life crisis, Matthew 11:28-30 came to mind. The verses about those who labor and are heavy laden going to Jesus and getting rest for their souls. I can’t really recall a time in my life when I thought I was really “heavy laden” until now.
I find that usually the Holy Spirit puts verses on my heart when they are particularly applicable—he’s cool like that—but as I though about it, I couldn’t help but think that I couldn’t really see how Jesus was going to be much help in bearing the burden of my everyday life.
I have a friend who has a very helpful husband. He cleans. He cooks. He’s even helped her enter grades before. He’s pretty much fabulous. Sometimes when she’s had a particularly stressful day, she’ll get home and he will have cleaned up and made dinner for her. Naturally, she tells me about it when we get to school the next day, and while I think it is absolutely amazing and am so glad that she has such a wonderful husband (because she is totally fantastic and totally deserves it), I can’t help but feel a little sad/jealous twinge because I don’t have that. When I am overwhelmed with my life, I still have to clean up and make food for myself when I get home, and there are some days when I just really wish there would be someone there at home to do it for me--or at least someone to do it with me. When I think of someone taking my burden, that’s what I think about, and I don’t really see Jesus doing that. (I mean, I know that if He wanted to He could become a person, come to my house, clean my room, and make me dinner. I don’t know if I would want Him to though because if I got home from school one day and found Jesus standing there with dinner and a glass of wine I would see it as a sign that I had actually lost my mind. This would probably just make things worse.)
So, despite the fact that I didn’t really understand how Jesus was going to take this particular heavy burden away, I decided it couldn’t hurt to take it to Him anyway, and even though it didn’t really make sense to me, I took it to Jesus and laid it all on the table, trusting that somehow He would help. I had a really honest conversation with Him that went a little something like this:
I’m tired and I’m lonely and I just wish I had someone to share my life with, someone to share the boring, everyday stuff with, someone who would feed me when I had had a really bad day, someone who would get the oil changed in my car—or at least take me to get it done, someone who would help me take care of all life’s little things. Because doing everything alone is overwhelming and I’m really tired of it. And I don’t know how much longer I can handle it.
Then I cried some more and fell asleep.
When I woke up this morning, I felt strangely better. Nothing had changed—I still have more grading to do than should be humanly possible or legal, I still don’t have a boyfriend—but I guess overnight Jesus worked some magic to give me the strength to keep doing it, and to keep doing it as a single girl. I guess that’s what the verses in Matthew are really talking about. He’s not going to physically take my burdens away, He’s just going to give me His strength to deal with them, which is exactly what I need because my own strength is obviously nowhere near enough.
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